The Bluest Eye
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50 free The Bluest Eye trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Bluest Eye was Toni Morrison's first novel, and it remains one of the most taught and most argued-over books in United States classrooms. Set in Ohio in 1941, it follows Pecola Breedlove, a girl convinced that a different pair of eyes would change how the world treats her, as seen largely through the memories of her schoolmate Claudia MacTeer. This quiz follows the book's own order. Questions on Autumn cover Pecola's stay with the MacTeers and the Breedlove household; Winter brings Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Junior; Spring turns to Mr. Henry, the Fisher kitchen, the pasts of Pauline and Cholly, and Soaphead Church; Summer covers the sisters' hopes for Pecola's baby and the novel's ending. A character sits at the centre of nearly every question, so the quiz doubles as a who's who of the novel, and a final set looks at Morrison herself, how the book reached print, its afterlife on stage and in music, and the repeated attempts to remove it from classrooms. It suits students revising a set text, teachers who want a quick check on one section, and book clubs. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the questions describe the novel's hardest events plainly and without graphic detail.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which flowers do Claudia and Frieda MacTeer plant, believing blooms will save Pecola's baby, in The Bluest Eye?
Marigolds
Marigolds never come up that year, and the adult Claudia opens the novel admitting that she and her sister long blamed themselves for the failure.
Q 02Which child star's face is on the cup Pecola Breedlove keeps refilling with milk at the MacTeers' in The Bluest Eye?
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple enchants Pecola so much that she drinks three quarts of the family's milk just to keep holding the cup, while Claudia cannot stand the star.
Q 03In which Ohio town on Lake Erie, Toni Morrison's own birthplace, is the novel The Bluest Eye set?
Lorain
Lorain is where Morrison was born in 1931, so she was ten years old there in the autumn of 1941, when the story begins.
Q 04Which award did Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye, become the first Black woman to win in 1993?
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature reached her 23 years after her debut novel appeared, and no Black woman of any nationality had won it before.
Q 05Which series of school reading primers supplies the opening passage and chapter headings of The Bluest Eye?
Dick and Jane
Dick and Jane's cheerful white family opens the book, and garbled scraps of the same passage head the later chapters, an ideal home set against the Breedloves' own.
Q 06Which penny candy does Pecola buy from Mr. Yacobowski's grocery store in The Bluest Eye?
Mary Janes
Mary Janes carry a picture of a smiling blue-eyed girl on each wrapper, and Pecola buys them from a grocer who hesitates to touch her hand when he takes her pennies.
Q 07Which pet does Geraldine cherish more than her own son, Junior, in the Winter section of The Bluest Eye?
A cat
A cat gets all the tenderness Geraldine withholds from her family, so Junior turns his resentment on the animal and then blames Pecola when it dies.
Q 08Whose television book club chose The Bluest Eye in 2000, selling another 800,000 paperback copies of the novel?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey chose four Toni Morrison novels in six years, and Morrison called the club a reading revolution.
Q 09What does Claudia MacTeer do to the blue-eyed baby dolls she is given at Christmas in The Bluest Eye?
Takes them apart
She takes them apart piece by piece to find what the whole world thinks is lovable about them, and the adults scold her as ungrateful.
Q 10What does Cholly Breedlove do to his family's home that sends Pecola to stay with the MacTeers in The Bluest Eye?
Sets it on fire
He sets it on fire and lands in jail, so Pecola is lodged with the MacTeers while her mother stays with her employers and her brother with another family.
Q 11Which Swedish-born film star's name does the boarder Mr. Henry playfully give a MacTeer sister in The Bluest Eye?
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo is one nickname and Ginger Rogers the other, a bit of flattery that wins both girls over as soon as the lodger moves in.
Q 12Which famous chain of wartime border forts lends its name to Miss Marie, Pecola's upstairs neighbor in The Bluest Eye?
The Maginot Line
The Maginot Line is what Claudia and Frieda call her, copying the adults, while Pecola simply says Miss Marie and is treated kindly by her.
Q 13Which two countries share names with Miss Marie's fellow prostitutes, living above the Breedloves in The Bluest Eye?
China and Poland
Q 21Which pet name does the Fisher family's little girl use for Mrs. Breedlove, her housekeeper, in The Bluest Eye?
Polly
Polly is the nickname the white family gives her, and she keeps their big lakefront house in perfect order while she stops cleaning her own.
Q 22What does Pecola accidentally knock off the counter in the Fishers' kitchen, scalding her legs, in The Bluest Eye?
A berry cobbler
A berry cobbler splatters the spotless floor, and Mrs. Breedlove slaps her daughter and then comforts the crying white child, promising to bake another.
Q 23Which 1930s film star does Pauline Breedlove copy when fixing her hair in The Bluest Eye?
Jean Harlow
China and Poland joke and tell stories with her upstairs, and the three women are among the very few adults who show Pecola any affection.
Q 14Which treat does Maureen Peal buy for Pecola, but not for Claudia and Frieda, in The Bluest Eye?
Ice cream
Ice cream goes to Pecola alone, and Claudia, who had assumed she would be treated too, walks on embarrassed and empty-handed.
Q 15With what does Frieda MacTeer strike a boy to break up the circle taunting Pecola in The Bluest Eye?
Her schoolbooks
Her schoolbooks come down on Woodrow Cain, and the boys finally drift off because they do not want to brawl in front of the admired new girl.
Q 16How does Mr. Henry explain the two prostitutes Claudia and Frieda catch him entertaining in The Bluest Eye?
His Bible study group
His Bible study group is the lie, and the sisters agree to keep it from their mother, who detests the two women.
Q 17In what kind of converted building do the Breedloves live, beneath three prostitutes' apartment, in The Bluest Eye?
A storefront
A storefront is home to the whole family, and the novel lists what the building later became: a pizza parlor, a Hungarian bakery, a real estate office.
Q 18Which piece of Breedlove furniture arrived already torn, yet still had to be paid off monthly, in The Bluest Eye?
The sofa
The sofa split down the back before delivery and the seller refused to take it back, so it sits in the front room as a daily reminder of being cheated.
Q 19What has Sammy Breedlove, Pecola's older brother, done at least twenty-seven times by age fourteen in The Bluest Eye?
Run away from home
He has run away from home again and again to escape his parents' fights, and near the end of the story he leaves for good.
Q 20Which word does Claudia MacTeer use for homelessness, the fate that briefly befalls Pecola, in The Bluest Eye?
Outdoors
Outdoors is how Claudia describes Pecola's plight when the girl arrives at the MacTeer house as a temporary foster child, her own family scattered.
Jean Harlow is her model during her first pregnancy, when lonely afternoons at the movies teach her to measure every face against the screen's idea of beauty.
Q 24What does Pauline Breedlove lose at the movies, souring her on glamour, in The Bluest Eye?
A tooth
A tooth comes out in the cinema, and from then on she stops caring how she looks, and the quarrels with her husband start up again.
Q 25What did Pauline Breedlove step on at the age of two, leaving her with a lifelong limp, in The Bluest Eye?
A nail
A nail through her foot in Alabama left it crooked, and with ten brothers and sisters around her she blamed the limp for making her feel overlooked at home.
Q 26In which state do Pauline and Cholly Breedlove meet and marry before moving north in The Bluest Eye?
Kentucky
Kentucky is where her family had gone looking for work, and Cholly wins her there by tickling her injured foot as she leans on a fence.
Q 27Which relative rescues the abandoned four-day-old Cholly Breedlove and raises him in The Bluest Eye?
His great-aunt
His great-aunt Jimmy takes him in and names him Charles after her own brother, and her death in his teens leaves him with no one.
Q 28To which Georgia city does the teenage Cholly Breedlove travel in search of his father in The Bluest Eye?
Macon
Macon is where he finds the man in an alley, too absorbed in a game of craps to care who the boy is, and the rejection breaks him.
Q 29What does Soaphead Church have Pecola feed his landlady's old dog as a supposed omen in The Bluest Eye?
Poisoned meat
Poisoned meat rids him of an animal he loathes, and when the dog convulses Pecola takes it as proof that her wish for blue eyes has been granted.
Q 30To whom does Soaphead Church address the long, boastful letter he writes after Pecola's visit in The Bluest Eye?
God
God, the letter claims, is jealous of him, because he has made Pecola believe she has the blue eyes she begged for.